There was no more running around the schoolyard faster than everyone.
I had lost my aerodynamic advantage. Gone from eagle to chicken because my clutch needed expressing.
But I wanted only to hatch ideas.
A year later a dam broke and then something else. A little thread of what might have been tugged.
Sometimes when I pulled the string of the tampon I imagined I was a magician trying to free a rabbit from my pink canal.
The rabbit would hop away to a magical land where there were no boys or girls, only creatures that could change their genitalia based upon how the sun hit the rocks near the pond.
Other times when I pulled the string it felt like I was pulling out a bit of a clotted dream.
I was not flowering into anything.
--Jill Grunewald